“It’s like the movie Little Miss Sunshine, but without the healthy family relationships.” (Ben)

I just returned from a family vacation to Florida where I was lured with promises of a visit to Disney World where I could frolic with the mice. There was no land of Mickey. There was no vacation. However, they did keep their promise in that there were rodents. Oh, how there were rodents.
For over thirty hours of driving time, I was contorted into positions which I thought only contestants of “The Flavor of Love” regularly found themselves. Everyone else, except for my handicapped father, would have been able to sit like a normal person in my seat, yet I was the one forced in that spot. At one point, the relative beside me noticed my longing looks at her seat as she stretched out her petite frame (seven inches shorter than mine) and said, “I am just always more comfortable on the left hand side of the car.” Funny, I’m more comfortable when I don’t have to gnaw on my knees just to sit down.
Would you like to see pictures of my family “vacation”?


We ended up at this swampland by Lake Okeechobee where it was 105 with full force humidity. My great uncle Charlie died, and they wanted to find out how and what had happened to his house and belongings. Above is what was found.
A man named “Junior”, who purposely lowered his pants so I could see below his hip flexor muscles as I talked to him, thought the GOVERMENT had done it as a CONSPIRACY to burn out places they don’t like. A more reasonable theory is that it was in a bad neighborhood and some drug users were staying there who accidentally burned it down. As the rest of my family sat perched on the edge of their seats in the air conditioned car, I was dispatched to wade through waist high rat and snake infested grass to inspect the lot and the vehicles (which were not my Uncle’s).
That was followed by a trip out along a stretch of road directly beside the lake where my grandmother insisted I knock along doors to ask the residents therein if they were familiar with people who lived their in the 1920s. It’s the first time I have ever been mistaken for a Jehovah’s Witness. At one point, I had a twenty minute conversation with a woman barking at me while I stood on her porch. Along with the intense heat which caused me to be leaving a puddle of sweat wherever I stood, I was terrified because the ceiling of the porch was LINED with bees’ nests. I could barely see the ceiling through the swarms of buzzing. Yet, she thought it was perfectly normal to have me stand there as she chattily fed me more genealogical information than I could ever process.
This was all just the first day which ended with me in a bar with my mother, my grandmother in her 80s, Junior’s lady friend, and a man who gave my grandmother his digits named Reuben. Way to go, grandma.
Boy, am I tired but I am also almost ten pounds lighter. Amazing what a family vacation boot camp can do for one’s figure!